We are a free people who consented to be governed. Not vice versa. [262]

Senator Sununu didn’t claim to be proud of being a politician. “I’m intrigued,” he said, “by the notion that most of our country’s founders were suspicious of anyone who wanted to hold public office, e.g., Aaron Burr. The founders retained that suspicion even after they themselves held public office. They regarded it as an obligation, not an aspiration.”

Sununu had held office for a dozen years, first as a congessman, then as a senator. I asked, “Are you suspicious of yourself?”

“When the New Hampshire House seat came open,” he said, “I looked at the other people who had announced. I came to the conclusion that if I didn’t run, New Hampshire would be represented by another trial lawyer.” [262-263]

Politics can’t save us. Politicis is the idea that society’s ills can be cured politically. This is a cookbook where the recipe foe everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried. The salad is fried. So is the ice cream and the cake. Your bottle of cabernet sauvignon is rolled in bread crumbs and dunked in the deep-fat fryer. Hence our big, fat political ass. [252]

Politics is forever deciding that we shall be murdered, seduced, and entangled in legalities. The only answer to politics is to reduce its power to do these things. [253]